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Workload and disciplinary problems have topped the table of reasons why lawyers contacted mental health charity LawCare last year, between them accounting for nearly half of all calls.

Failure to undertake continuous professional development will be an “aggravating factor” when enforcement decisions are made against those guilty of incompetence, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said.

The Bar Standards Board has turned to the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives to provide training to members of staff without legal qualifications. Meanwhile, ILEX Professional Standards – CILEx’s regulatory arm – is on the hunt for a new chief executive.

There is to be a drive to recruit retiring law firm partners to the senior judiciary in a bid to improve diversity, it has emerged. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, said he is looking at a “more sensible way” of recruiting partners who retire early onto the High Court bench.

Legal education providers have warned that the possible introduction of a new, centralised assessment test for all would-be solicitors by the Solicitors Regulation Authority could be “a step back”.

Law firms and chambers need to accelerate the increase in workforce diversity if they are to ward off the “nuclear” option of quotas being imposed, the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) has warned.

Solicitors, consumers and businesses who took part in research for the Solicitors Regulation Authority have given high marks to a draft competence statement, which aims to define the standards needed to enter and remain in the profession.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has proposed scrapping the compulsory management course that all solicitors are required to undertake within three years of qualification.

A Walsall law firm has successfully appealed an employment tribunal ruling that a paralegal had been unlawfully harassed because she was Polish.

There needs to be “significantly more progress” to break the hold of Britain’s elite on the legal profession, the Legal Services Board has claimed. It followed a report published last week that found fewer senior judges went to comprehensive schools than any other group of top professionals.

Yorkshire’s largest conveyancing firm has set up a £150,000 training academy after its workload trebled in the past two years. It comes as the Law Society has predicted increased turnover growth in the legal sector this year and next, in part because of the recovering property market.

Global demand for non-traditional legal services, such as contract lawyers and document-review services, will rise sharply over the next five years, research for Allen & Overy has found.

Smaller law firms are struggling to retain their junior partners in advance of tough new capital requirements set out by HM Revenue & Customs in its crackdown on fixed-share partners avoiding PAYE tax, an executive search firm has claimed.

A five-year project to celebrate the achievements of women lawyers has been launched, culminating at the centenary of the Act of Parliament which abolished the bar on their entry into the profession.

Alternative legal services provider Lawyers On Demand (LOD) has launched a Manchester ‘hub’, its first outside of London, in a bid to expand its ‘on site’ model of placing freelance lawyers into companies.